Solving the “last-mile” problem has been an important part of providing ubiquitous, high-speed Internet access to business and residential customers (“subscribers”) at their premises. Digital Subscriber Line (“DSL”) and CATV Internet services are now well-entrenched means of solving the last-mile problem. A common feature of last-mile solutions is a switching station that has a gateway connected to the Internet via a backhaul, such as T1, T3, a virtual network or the like. The gateway interfaces the backhaul with the particular communication medium or channel used to deliver the Internet service to the subscriber premises.
In DSL (and its variants, commonly referred to xDSL), the switching station is typically a central office as commonly found in the public switched telephone network (“PSTN”), and the gateway is a Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (“DSLAM”). The communication medium is typically the traditional twisted pair of copper wires that run between the central office and subscriber premises, and normally connect to a plain old telephone service (“POTS”) telephone in the subscriber premises. Where the subscriber is a DSL customer, the twisted pair of copper wires in the customer premises are also connected to a DSL modem, which in turn connects to the subscriber's computer. A data communication session can thus established between the subscriber's computer and a desired location on the Internet.
Problems with the foregoing arise when a subscriber loses, or believes to have lost, Internet connectivity. To troubleshoot this problem, it is common for the service provider to send a service technician to the subscriber premises. To verify Internet connectivity, the service technician can attempt to make their own Internet connection from the subscriber premises in order to assess whether a connectivity problem actually exists, and if so, to attempt to determine the nature of the problem. However, such use of service technicians can be wasteful, particularly where the technician discovers that no connectivity problem exists and that the subscriber's problems are in fact related to the subscriber's proprietary equipment, or other equipment located at the subscriber's premises.
With a view to overcoming these difficulties, the concept of a “management session” has arisen. The purpose of a management session is to troubleshoot a subscriber's modem from a conveniently located customer service center, thus eliminating the need to dispatch a service technician to the modem site. Such management sessions are typically run in parallel with the data communication session, and provide continuous monitoring of the modem in question.
However, a concern with the concept of a persistent (or “always-on”) management session is the consumption of resources inside the modem needed to operate the management session, as well as the network resources necessary to maintain such session. Another concern with persistent management sessions is the creation of security loopholes. Specifically, a malicious individual interested in “fooling” the modem into believing that she/he is at the customer service center can study the behaviour of the communications exchanged during the management session and learn the appropriate messages to be used. As a result, malicious individuals can hack into residential modems and invade customer privacy.
Against this background, there is a need for improved techniques in the management of modems and other customer premises devices.